Customer Reviews

The Who Sell Out (33 1/3)

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i agree with most reviews here: almost nothing related to what this series is real about: the making of this album.
ok, nice to know a lot about pirate radio, if you live in south america and never heard about, but frankly: the pop art talb about that waste more than half of this book is really out of place and almost pointless.real disappointed with this one, even more after reading the fabulous exile on main street! this one a great book indeed!

Being that 'The Who Sell Out' has long been my favorite album by my favorite band, I was greatly looking forward to reading this book. What a disappointment. Writer John Dougan wastes so much time describing his own early experiences with music and the history of British pirate radio that he ends up devoting a mere 20 pages to the actual content of the Who's masterpiece. And much of what he says about that music is as offhand and cursory as his chapters about pirate radio are unnecessarily exhaustive (he can barely muster two sentences in his discussion of the song "Relax"). Elsewhere, his evaluations are often glib and weightless (his ambivalent reaction to John Entwistle's "Silas Stingy" will be particularly irritating to anyone who actually likes this album). Dougan should have taken a look at Andy Miller's fine 33 1/3 installment on 'The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society' (incidentally, an album that was released at the end of 1968, Mr. Dougan, NOT 1967, as you suggest) to see how these books should be written.

This book is very disappointing, and should have been rejected for this series. It's a book about swinging London and the context of The Who and The Who Sell Out. It's NOT a book about the Who Sell Out.

The reader is right on who points to the Village Green book as what this should've been, and could've been.......there were so many outtakes, related singles, some alternate takes..... Sorry, there's just too much to write about this album to not write about this album. Especially if your book is called "The Who Sell Out" (i.e., a book devoted to this wonderful, classic, cult album).

The recent Deluxe Edition CD, and even the '95 remaster with all the bonus tracks (which predated this book by a decade), show just how much material of interest there was here. Buy those cds and read the liner notes instead. Or at least give this a big perusal before buying so you know what you're getting. I'm sorry I shelled out for this, myself. Sorry, John D.!

There's hardly any information here about the making of this album at all--just a glance at the circumstances that led to the gestation of it. It's a cursory accounting of the social conditions and the state of The Who at the time.

When I bought this I was hoping for something new and interesting, but this isn't a bit as good as any issue of MOJO magazine! If you are a long-time fan of both The Who and this album you probably already know most of what's in this book because the authors sites only other well known books about the band as his main sources. Books, by the way, that were all published years ago. Many topics brought up in this book have been expounded upon by Townshend & Co. in much greater detail over the past 15 years. There's no excuse for this book to be so outdated.

Besides the very common knowledge are his opinions on various aspects of the album, the times and pop music. So what? It would have been worth it if he had scared up some new revelations or had even interviewed somebody in the band, but no.

Don't bother with this one, chaps. Unless you want to buy my copy?